Technical Field
The invention relates to a method for reducing renal hypertension and a computer-readable medium utilizing such method.
Related Art
Renovascular hypertension (or “renal hypertension”) is a condition of high blood pressure due to kidney's hormonal response to narrowing renal arteries which is caused by parenchymal renal diseases and/or renal artery diseases. When the renal arteries become narrow to result in less blood flow, the kidney may mistakenly send messages via the renal sympathetic nerves to the brain. In response to these messages, the brain will increase cardiac output and cause high blood pressure. Treatments of the renal hypertension includes medication therapy to help control blood pressure and surgical therapy. The surgical therapy of the renal hypertension usually can include balloon angioplasty and stent implantation of kidney arteries.
However, in terms of medication therapy, the efficacy of medicine is often getting worse with progression of the disease, and it may also cause kidney atrophy in the long term aspect. As to surgical therapy, balloon angioplasty may improve the narrowing of kidney arteries. However, the cure rate of the hypertension by stent implantation of kidney arteries is less than 30%, and the patients may still be required to continue to receive antiplatelet drugs and to strengthen the control of blood pressure and lipids.
As shown in FIG. 22, in the rat model of neuropathic pain provided by Ronen Shechter et al. (Ronen Shechter et al. (2013, August), Conventional and Kilohertz-frequency Spinal Cord Stimulation Produces Intensity- and Frequency-dependent Inhibition of Mechanical Hypersensitivity in a Rat Model of Neuropathic Pain, ANESTHESIOLOGY, 119(2), 422-32), the rats with spinal cord injuries were received an electrical stimulation with frequency of 50 Hz to 10 kHz for thirty minutes (80% MoT, constant current, current intensity 0.6 mA-0.7 mA). The paw withdraw thresholds started to drop at 30 minutes after end of the electrical stimulation. Also, it is noted that the paw withdraw thresholds returned to pre-stimulation level at 5 days after the last electrical stimulation. In other words, such conventional electrical stimulation did not provide a long term effect. Patients may have to receive such electrical stimulation for every 4-5 days (or even several times for one day) so as to continuously ameliorate the symptoms caused by neural hypersensitivity. However, such treatment will make patients more and more uncomfortable and also increase the inconvenience of the treating course.
In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 8,131,372 discloses a method to treat hypertension and renal failure by stimulating the renal nerve. In this method, an electrode is placed adjacent to the renal sympathetic nerve. The renal nerve is then ablated so as to reduce sympathetic activities of kidney nerves, which results in a reduction in blood pressure of the patient. However, ablation of nerves is a destructive therapy, and once the nerve regenerates, the patient may suffer a higher blood pressure than before ablation of the kidney nerves.
Moreover, U.S. Pat. No. 7,162,303, as well as U.S. Pat. No. 7,647,115, discloses an electrical therapy to place the electrode adjacent to the renal sympathetic nerve and to generate an electrical field to stimulate the kidney nerves, so as to reduce the sympathetic activities of the kidney nerves and help to reduce the blood pressure.
Therefore, it is important to provide a method for reducing renal hypertension which can effectively ameliorate symptoms of high blood pressure with long term effects, without the side effects caused by drugs, and also reduce the possibility of infection caused by surgical therapies, such as stent implantation and destructive therapy of ablation.